When I was younger and less concerned with things like my hairline, and notorizing my will, I was employed as a day camp counselor for a couple of summers between academic semesters at college - it is an experience I can't talk about in great detail, even now, as litigation is still pending over a swirlie I administered without the presence of a lifeguard. The most chaotic time of the day at summer camp was each morning's post-swimming locker room roundup. Within seconds of the swim-end whistle being sounded, the boys' locker room transformed into this slippery naked Babylon for the campers. The level of noise, and the animal pitch of it, was deafening. For me, the locker room was where my ability to filter out commotion with a Zen-like focus was both developed and refined. (And later applied, again and again, at employee review meetings, on blind dates, and during calls from home.) The locker room was where I learned the sound of one towel snapping.

One particular day, as squeals and peals were reaching a state of near delirium, I noticed a group of the older kids (and when I saw older, I mean 10-12 year olds) trotting by my locker single-file, with flat-footed wet smacks on the locker room's tiled floor. This was not so unusual, except their laughter sounded a little too innocuous, not their usual lynch mob laughter. Here's another detail that struck me as odd: it was clear they were all coming from the shower because their skin was cauterized, and looked a bit like Canadian bacon - pink and waterlogged. That was normal, but they were also forming this en masse return from their consensual holy land completely buck-naked. Group nudity between young boys, although not cause for alarm (and often cause for celebration among creepy old men like Aristotle), was still an unusual sight at summer camp. These kids were getting to that age where getting naked together was bordering on calculated, rather than coincidental. As I made up my mind to ignore it (it's best not to dwell on these things, unless of course you're a creepy old man like Aeschylus or Sophocles) and pack away my wet things so I could begin my routine locker patrol, one of the participants in this naked rite stopped by for a locker visit, steaming, giggling.

"Guess what we all did!" he demanded, all his breath nearly extinguished from wild laughter.

Naturally, I couldn't imagine--well, actually I could imagine but I tried very hard not to.

"All the twelve year olds took showers naked today. It was so fuuuuuunny!"

You've heard of it, many of us have been cleaned by it: baby's first male-bonding shower. These kids were just old enough to begin an understanding of all the various embarrassing protrusions on their bodies but just young enough to forget them for just a second for the greater cause of inane naked brotherhood. I guess these kinds of rites are a necessary part of the maturation process but unfortunately they rarely go completely smoothly. For one, the communal shower is a place where nicknames are born. Names like "Horse" and "Pinky" and "Bitch-tits" and "Stin". And sure enough, as I glanced over from the inside of my locker to this freshly initiated young man, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye I can only describe as 'potentially catastrophic'. But specifically catastrophic, like the S.S. Titanic; something great that achieves its particular disaster only in a very specific context. Someone could get hurt. Someone would get hurt. Add it up: there before me, on a recently showered boy, a boy whose recent showering involved a group of equally naked boys his own age, there, a peremptory physiological decision, there on his naked little body was a skinny, but freshly popped boner.

Water Good; Iceberg Bad. Boner Good; boner in a locker room full of other naked 12 year old boys, well…

As he ran to attend to his friends, my throat filled up and my neck hairs went prickle-sharp as I counted backwards from five in my head. There were no more than five seconds between boyhood and manhood, between pre-pubescent glee and adolescent shame, between a summer camp and a psychiatrist's office. And those five seconds were winding themselves down tightly like an alarm clock in my head. (It was a hammer being pulled back tautly before striking the dome of a bell. FIVE... "There she stands, the Titanic. What a marvel of seaworthy engineering"...FOUR. ..."Did you hear something?"...... THREE..."Oh my God--Iceberg!!" TWO..."We're going down, captain!!!!" -- B O N E R ! ! ! !

"Boner! Boner! Boner!" filled the locker room as every boy in camp ages seven to twelve scampered over to the back of the locker room dressed in nothing but sweat socks, in shoes untied and laces clicking on ceramic tile, with duffels hanging heavy, wet towels in shopping bags lolling from their gaping zippers, to get to gather evidence. And there was the human Titanic trapped in the middle of an accusing circle like Frankenstein's monster, his boner still audibly popping and impossible to hide, reflected by what seemed like hundreds of pointing, accusatory fingers re-creating the boner in effigy. Everyone understood what it meant. From this day forward, apart from leaving the country altogether or undergoing expensive reconstructive surgery, this child would be forever stigmatized as "the kid who got a boner looking at other naked guys". Yes it's a long nickname, and not a terribly creative one, but it could stick.

It didn't matter what this kid did for the rest of his life. I suppose he could rise above this (although I can't imagine how someone could rise above a public boner incident of this magnitude) and become personally successful, the envy of all his remaining friends. He might even muster enough courage to attend a twenty-year camp reunion, chest forward, bent on burying the tattered remains of his terrible childhood. But as soon as lummox recognizes him, as soon as someone says, "hey, weren't you the kid who got a boner looking at other boys naked?" he will be reduced to the same hot-skinned, dripping wet, boner-bobbing reject from the Locker Room of Eden twenty years before.

I have seen terrible things in my life. And I'm sure the inside of that locker room has seen just as many. But I'm sure that long after that locker room has seen its last group shower, the walls will still be resounding with the haunting cries of "boner" into the night.